19.05.2006 RUSSIA’S CE PRESIDENCY MAY BE SHORT – KOMMERSANT

Chisinau, May 19 (Infotag). If Russia fails to fulfill the Council of Europe Resolution on liberation of the Ilascu group members from a Tiraspol prison, its CE presidency may be fairly short, wrote Kommersant, a popular Moscow publication.

Today, Russia is assuming, for the first time ever, the chairmanship in the Council of Europe Committee of Foreign Ministers, to replace Romania, and is going to conduct its presidency under the motto of “Europe without Division Lines”.

The newspaper presumes that despite all efforts to create an architecture of a united Europe, problems are remaining in Russia that may lead to suspension of its CE presidency, first of all because the Russian Federation remains the only CE member state which has not till now abolished capital punishment de jure. Due to this circumstance, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe deputies actively debated yet in end 2005 the idea of depriving Russia of the CE presidency privilege.

Kommersant reminded that the latest such attempt was undertaken before the last month’s PACE Session, when deputy Kristos Punguridis of Cyprus proposed to raise signatures in support of depriving Russia of the presidency opportunity.

The newspaper presumes also that the “Punguridis enterprise” is not the only reason why Russia may have its CE chairmanship frozen: three days before Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov had arrived in Strasbourg, the CE Committee, chaired by Romania, had adopted its 4th (since 2004) Resolution compelling Russia to release Ilie Ilascu’s comrades from prison.

The Ilascu group of 6 was sentenced in 1992 to various terms (and Ilie Ilascu to capital punishment) for terror acts committed in Transnistria during the armed conflict that year. One of them, Valeriu Garbuz, admitted his guilt and was released several months later. Petru Godeac remained behind bars 2 years. The remaining 4 men lodged a claim with the European Court of Human Rights in 1999 against the Governments of Russia and Moldova whom they considered as responsible for violating their human rights. In 2001, the group leader, Ilie Ilascu, was released. He maintained then that the main condition, set before him by the Tiraspol administration in exchange for his freedom, was revocation of the claim from the European Court of Human Rights. However, the group rejected that offer.